The picture has become a classic among Golf Digest cover photos. A baby gorilla, outrageously attired in plaid golf knickers, argyle socks, blue shoes and red sweater, sprawls over the back of an unamused golfer.
The caption? ”How Payne Stewart Got The Monkey Off His Back.” The golfer? It was Stewart, willing to poke a little fun at himself. It was the July 1987 issue, written to lionize Stewart`s victory at the 1987 Bay Hill Classic.
Cute picture, cute headline, cute gorilla. Unfortunately, it was two years premature.
One victory doesn`t exorcize a monkey, not when the monkey`s chauffeur has one of golf`s all-time classic swings, not when that golfer had amassed more than $2 million in earnings with only three victories, not when that man has so much ability that John Mahaffey once took a look at him and pronounced, ”He has the whole package.”
Today, nine years after Payne Stewart joined the PGA Tour in 1981, the monkey`s ride is officially over. In 1989 the Beau Brummell of Bay Hill, golf`s knockout in knickers, became a man fulfilled. Two victories, his first major championship and $1,201,301 in earnings made Stewart a man who, at last, fulfilled his predicted destiny. As the 1990 golf season begins, this has become a man who doesn`t monkey around.
Stewart hates to see the point belabored, but to appreciate where he is today, you must understand where he has come from. Elizabeth Taylor hasn`t had half the heartbreaks. Over one four-year period in the mid-`80s, Stewart lost six tournaments in Texas by a total of seven shots. His reputation was one of a man who always had the golf game to lead a tournament but never the mental makeup to win it.
Rarely has there been a more distressing loss than his at the 1985 Byron Nelson Classic. There he stood on the 18th tee on the last day with a three-shot lead, but he scraped his ball into three bunkers for a double bogey and was forced into a playoff. Then, on the first playoff hole, he sustained another double bogey to lose to Bob Eastwood, who won it with a bogey.
He blew a tournament in Houston with a water-ball at No. 18 on Sunday and lost at Colonial when he bogeyed the 72nd hole and then bogeyed the first playoff hole.
Oh, he never had any trouble paying the bills on his Bay Hill home. For three consecutive years he surpassed $500,000. But repeatedly something would happen on the final holes to throw off his game-a monkey wrench, perhaps?
At the TPC two years ago he made this telling observation: ”I told my wife and my friend Harvie Ward (his teaching pro) that I didn`t know if I was ready to be No. 1. There are a lot of things that go along with it, a lot of demands on your time.”
He still isn`t No. 1, although he might be close to No. 1-A. Like years past, 1989 was a year when he had the standard number of top 10 near-misses.
But 1989 was also the year he became a multiple winner. It started with an easy, five-shot victory at the Heritage. He broke through to win his first major championship, the PGA. He barely missed winning for a third time when Tom Kite beat him a playoff in the rich Nabisco Championship at season`s end. What finally boosted him over the top? It wasn`t the 300-yard drives or the 20-foot putts. It was the 6-inch space between the ears.
”I became much better mentally,” Stewart said. ”I`ve been working with a sports psychologist, Dick Coop, and he`s helped me to approach each shot-whether it is the first shot on Thursday or the last shot on Sunday-as the same.
”My golf game always seemed to get me in position. But I think maybe it was my mental capacity that wouldn`t allow me to go ahead and capitalize on the position I was getting in. I think that now I`ve learned how to do that, how to continue doing the things I did to get me in a winning position-then just let the outcome come.”
Oh, Stewart still wasn`t perfect. He gave his detractors more ammunition when he lost at Nabisco and failed to win at the British Open when he had the chance on the final day. He had shot 65 and 69 in the two middle rounds to pull one shot from the lead, but he sagged badly with a 74 on Sunday.
But it was that collapse, when he was on the verge of winning his first major, that might have been the difference when he finally did win-at the PGA. ”At the British Open on the last day, I went out and tried to win the golf tournament, instead of going out and just playing Payne Stewart`s golf game,” he said.
”That was the most disappointing round I think I played all year. I tried to go out and just grab it, instead of letting the golf tournament come to me.”
The lesson was emblazoned even more deeply at the PGA. There, Mike Reid had the tournament virtually won in the final round until he hit a shot in the water at No. 15, then double bogeyed at 17. For a change, Stewart got a chance to fall on a winner`s check that had just been fumbled by someone else. He was patient, and his 67 was a winning number.
When 1989 began, there was nothing to suggest it would be Stewart`s turnaround season. January-and the West Coast-was a pitiful experience. Stewart`s perennial back problem flared at the most inopportune of times, causing him to miss the cut or withdraw in three of the first four events.
”My wife and I were flying back home on the plane, and we faced the reality that this could be the worst year we`ve ever had,” Stewart said. ”I only made one check on the West Coast, and my back was doing tricks on me.
”But I started working out, getting my back in shape, getting physically in shape. What a difference that made. It carried over into my game when I started losing the weight, getting in shape and getting stronger. I really think that had a lot to do with how I played the rest of the year, because I continued to work out the rest of the year.”
One month after he left the West Coast in agony, Stewart was ready to test the back again. He joined the Tour in Florida at the Honda.
He said he couldn`t believe it when he shot 68 the first day, then followed with 65. He maintained the roll by being under par all four days, finishing with 70 and 67. He would have won there had it not been for a career kind of tournament by Blaine McCallister, who had 64 on Sunday to win with 22 under par-on a difficult golf course.
But that was OK. Stewart had found out what he wanted-that the back would hold up while he was subjecting it to the twisting pressure of a golf swing. The next week he tied for fourth at Bay Hill, and three weeks later he tied for fifth at New Orleans. From there on, Stewart was the best player on Tour. As much as he passes the credit to others for his ascent to superstardom, the others say Stewart has done this largely on his own.
”I`ve done very little with Payne`s swing,” says Ward, who began tutoring Stewart in 1985 at the advice of Grand Cypress` Paul Celano. ”You don`t tinker with the engine of a Rolls-Royce.
”We`ve worked on his temperament under pressure and his tempo. He tends to get off his sync a little in the heat. We talked openly about his problems in winning. It bothered him. I had to remind him that I was considered one of the best amateurs in the country, but I got beat in nine straight U.S. Amateurs before I finally won.”
It has been a continual mystery to his fellow pros why Stewart wasn`t a big winner long before. Greg Norman scratched his head a couple of years ago and wondered why a 30-year-old Payne Stewart already had not won a couple of majors.
”He has the best all-around game of all the younger American players,”
Norman said. ”Hal Sutton is the best ball-striker, but Payne has it all.”
In all fairness, the 1989 Tour ended in another disaster for Stewart. He began the final day at Nabisco four strokes off the lead, then shot 29 on the front side to grasp the lead.
He still owned a two-shot lead as he stood on the tee at No. 18. But a three-putt bogey there while Tom Kite was making birdie forced a playoff. And Stewart then three-putted the second playoff hole to lose not only the tournament but the lead in the Tour money race.
Stewart swallowed hard and addressed this latest heartbreak. ”There can be only one winner each week,” he philosophized, ”and this week it was Tom. I have to look at it and realize I`ve had a great year. Sure, this hurts. But life goes on, and Payne Stewart will be back next year.”
This year, Stewart can actually laugh at the misfortunes of the younger Payne Stewart. He honestly feels he has reached the place where superstars reside.
”I feel a lot better about this season,” he said. ”I feel my life`s in control. I`m in better physical shape than I`ve been in years.
”That`s funny, isn`t it, to say that here I am 32 years old, almost 33
(on Jan. 30), and I`m in the best shape of my life. That`s sickening. That means I`ve wasted a lot of time getting here.”
He tied with Norman for the lowest stroke average on Tour (69.49). He won more than $1 million and would have been the leading money-winner if not for Nabisco. He won his first major championship. And yet, he says 1989 was just the prelims.
”I think my best years are yet to come,” Stewart said. ”I really think the work that I am doing is going to pay off down the line, whether in 1990 or whether it is still a couple of years down the road. But I don`t think I`ve reached my peak by any means.”
